An article on the Sioux City Journal website yesterday has quotes from Republican Leader Kraig Paulsen regarding the upcoming election, the tea party movement, and the results of government activity at the state and federal level:

“If you haven’t noticed, a movement was created over the last 15 months,” Paulsen said. “Massive federal intervention in the form of bailouts and takeovers has many Iowans feeling frustrated, powerless, helpless. Frustration and exasperation with their government has made them pay attention. It is time to give Iowan’s their state back.”

CEDAR RAPIDS – Iowa House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen is reaching out to Tea Party activists, telling them Republicans feel their frustration, powerlessness and helplessness.

In comments to the Iowa House moments before adjournment, Paulsen, a Hiawatha Republican, took notice of the so-called Tea Party movement that has come to life in response, mostly, to federal bailouts of financial institutions and car makers, and passage of a health care overhaul.

“If you haven’t noticed, a movement was created over the last 15 months,” Paulsen said. “Massive federal intervention in the form of bailouts and takeovers has many Iowans feeling frustrated, powerless, helpless. Frustration and exasperation with their government has made them pay attention. It is time to give Iowan’s their state back.”

Paulsen wants those Tea Partiers to understand that Republicans share those same concerns. He’d like them to join the GOP in this fall’s elections and help the minority party taking control of the Legislature.

“From a philosophical standpoint, the House Republican caucus reflects a whole lot of those same concerns,” Paulsen said Wednesday.

In fact, the newer House Republicans may have been Tea Partiers before there was a Tea Party, freshman GOP Reps. Renee Schulte of Cedar Rapids and Nick Wagner of Marion said.

“I’m a Republican and I’m tired of government intrusion, I’m tired of higher taxes, I’m tired of the way the budget has been handled,” Wagner aid. “It’s not just the Tea Partiers.”

Schulte believes that many of the concerns motivating Tea Party are the same reason she and Wagner ran for office two years ago.

“We’re tired of the spending and I think that’s why Nick and I ran,” Schulte said. “So maybe we’re a little ahead of the Tea Party curve.”

Paulsen, who has been involved in recruiting candidates over the past three election cycles, said people run for a variety of reasons. Often, he said, it’s to self-actualize.

“That’s absolutely not why people are running on the Republican ticket in 2010,” he said.

This year, he said. There’s a “much different level of motivation” among GOP candidates.

That’s also why Republicans have candidates for 87 of 100 House seats covered while Democrats have covered only 73, Paulsen said.

The 2010 campaign will be about jobs and the economy, which Paulsen believes work to the GOP’s advantage and are the source of many Tea Partiers’ frustrations.

“In the Democratic talking points they claim, the governor in particular, that I-JOBS is a big thing,” Paulsen said. “But basically its government work jobs that will go away. It’s not anywhere near the number Culver proposed.